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Summer has not officially started yet, but wildfire season has already arrived in the US. Now an intense heat wave coupled with extreme drought is threatening to make things worse.

Large wildfires have already burned 981,000 acres this year to date, more than the 766,000 acres burned by the same time last year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

In Arizona, more than 208,000 acres have burned, sending smoke into Colorado. The 123,000-acre Telegraph Fire is now in Arizona’s top 10 largest fires in history.

In Utah, blazes have charred more than 25,000 acres, with a new fire ignited every day for three weeks. California has seen a fourfold increase in year-to-date area burned compared to 2020.

It’s poised to get worse as summer officially begins. While 2021 may not beat the record-setting 2020 season, experts say it will be severe. “It’s probably going to be above-average for sure, but it’s not going to be off-the-charts,” said Craig Clements, director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San Jose State University.

It’s important to remember that wildfires are a natural part of many ecosystems. They help clear decay, restore nutrients to the soil, and are even required for some plants to germinate. Regular fires are a feature of many healthy forests and grasslands. However, wildfires have been getting more destructive in recent years, and humans are to blame. From building in fire-prone regions to suppressing natural fires to igniting blazes to changing the climate, humanity is making wildfires more expansive, costly, and deadly.

Even so, there are a lot of complicated and surprising factors that contribute to massive infernos, so there is a lot of variability year to year. Here are some of the factors that forecasters are worrying about in the western US.

Why 2021 is expected to be a bad fire year for the West

To ignite, a wildfire needs fuel, favorable weather, and an ignition source. But whether the overall fire season will be particularly severe or mild depends on variables that interact in complicated and sometimes contradictory ways.

For instance, a wet winter can help encourage more vegetation to grow in the spring, which can then turn into fuel as summer heats up. But a dry winter can add to aridity from ongoing droughts, particularly in areas that already have a lot of flammable fuel, such as forests. “In California, if it’s a dry year, it’s a bad fire season. If it’s a wet year, it’s a bad fire season,” Clements said.

So depending on the particular ecosystem — coastal forest, mountain forest, grassland, chaparral — the same weather and climate conditions can shift fire risk in different directions. But right now, these are the biggest factors driving wildfire risk across the board in the West:

Massive drought
Huge swaths of the western US are experiencing extreme dryness. About 72 percent of the region is considered to be in “severe” drought, while 26 percent is in the worst category of “exceptional” drought. Water levels in reservoirs like Lake Oroville in California and Lake Mead in Nevada have dropped to historic lows. Oregon just experienced its driest spring on record.

This dryness is a combination of both a 20-year drop in precipitation called a megadrought, as well as seasonal variation.

Last summer brought extreme heat to the region, which caused more moisture in the soil to evaporate, leaving less water for plants. The following winter then failed to bring much snow and rain, driven in part by a cooling pattern in the Pacific Ocean known as a La Niña. The snow that did accumulate dissipated faster than average, leaving a zero percent snowpack in the Sierra Nevada in May.

Warm weather
California was graced with some cool weather and light rainfall earlier this month, but now the temperature is starting to rise. The Southwest, meanwhile, is bracing for record heat this week. As many as 40 million Americans are poised to swelter as temperatures rise as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

High heat has a close relationship with fire risk. “If it’s really warm, we generally have a higher fire season,” Clements said. “If it’s cooler, it’ll be below average.”

Air can absorb about 7 percent more water for every degree Celsius the air warms. But if there isn’t much moisture to absorb to begin with, then there is a gap between what the air can fully absorb and what moisture is actually present. This gap is known as the vapor pressure deficit, and it’s a key warning signal of wildfire risk, indicating that there is little moisture moving through trees, shrubs, and grasses.

Lots of dry fuel
The combination of heat and aridity has left vegetation parched and primed to ignite. “Fuel moisture content is a critical factor in understanding fire behavior and fire danger,” Clements said.

That exceptionally dry vegetation then causes fires to burn hotter, faster, and longer, which in turn hampers efforts to contain them. It creates a cycle that can end up driving massive, devastating wildfires.

Day-to-day conditions can mitigate some of the long-term wildfire trends

While the deck is stacked in favor of major wildfires again this year, it’s not a guarantee that they will be larger, more frequent, or more destructive. Blazes still require an ignition source, and they depend on wind and persistent dry conditions to spread. “Things are looking scary, but if there’s no ignition, it’s not so bad,” Clements said.

If there isn’t a major wind event as fires ignite, they could remain contained. Similarly, bouts of rainfall or lower temperatures could quench flames. These weather events can drastically change the dynamics of fires and it’s not clear yet what the coming weeks will hold.

And if there is nothing to spark the flames, then there will be few new fires. The majority of wildfires in the US, upward of 84 percent, are ignited by humans. That can come from arson, unattended campfires, downed power lines, or machinery. So taking steps to reduce ignition, like banning fires in forested areas or limiting routes open to cars in fire-prone chaparral, can go a long way in reducing wildfire risk. Power companies like Pacific Gas & Electric are readying plans to shut off power to their customers to prevent their hardware from lighting new blazes.

But nature can ignite fires too. A dry lightning storm last year triggered a wave of fires in California. July is the peak month for lightning strikes in the West, and that’s one thing humans can’t prevent.

Over time, it’s possible to reduce the destructiveness of wildfires — for example through controlled burns, regular thinning of trees and brush that build up, and relocating homes and businesses away from high-risk areas. But the current situation developed over more than a century of poor planning, and it won’t be fixed overnight. So wildfires in the West are likely to get worse before they get better.

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The world’s leading health organization, the WHO, repeatedly broke its own rules and spent millions of dollars on high-priced management consultants, according to a new independent audit — even as the United Nations agency has struggled to pay for lifesaving equipment and vaccines in its global Covid-19 response.

An unnamed consulting company, which Vox has identified as BCG, charged the World Health Organization $11.72 million since the start of the pandemic for contracts that were dubiously awarded, according to the audit.

These revelations, which one expert called “disturbing” in an interview with Vox, came after a Vox investigation showed how management consulting firms such as BCG and McKinsey have become ubiquitous in global public health organizations, despite the concerns of many health practitioners about multimillion-dollar price tags, potential conflicts of interest, and the opaque nature of consulting work.

WHO researchers told Vox that the auditor report raised questions about the agency’s ability to responsibly and transparently spend public money from the 194 member countries that fund it. In recent months, the WHO has requested donations from its members and the general public, citing a funding gap of more than a billion dollars for its pandemic response.

Given that the WHO’s 2020-21 budget is $5.84 billion, $12 million may not sound like a massive amount — “but $12 million for a health care system in a low-income country would comprise a significant portion of their funding,” says Adam Kamradt-Scott, the incoming global health chair at the School of Transnational Governance in Florence, who studies the WHO. That amount could pay for about 600,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses from Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna. (The WHO is part of Covax, whose aim is to ensure all countries have equitable access to vaccines.) “If it’s money being wasted, that’s a lot of vaccines that could have been purchased,” Kamradt-Scott added.

The audit, which examines a sampling of the WHO’s biggest contracts, analyzed the agency’s work with BCG, known as “Consulting Firm A” in the report, and uncovered multiple violations of WHO policies. The auditors claim WHO staff sought to circumvent the organization’s public procurement rules in order to help BCG win a contract. Staff at the agency also broke WHO rules by repeatedly starting work with the firm before seeking formal approval to do so, according to the report.

Before the pandemic, Vox revealed the WHO committed at least $12 million on consultants to support the agency’s reform, approximately a quarter of which has been paid for directly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. At the time, a WHO spokesperson said the agency welcomed consultants’ work. “The [consulting] companies have supported WHO in areas where we lack in-house expertise or want to tap the current best-in-class standards.”

But controversy has surrounded high-priced consultants in a field dedicated to improving the health of the world’s poorest people. The consulting firm McKinsey advised the Trump administration on how to cut spending on food and medical care for migrants and played a role in increasing sales of prescription opioids, which have been linked to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Vox also documented how BCG helped boost sales of sugary drinks in India, although the WHO has called for reducing sugary drinks consumption and supports taxing the products.

The findings in the audit were recently accepted by the WHO’s member states at the annual World Health Assembly. In a statement, the WHO said it “takes seriously the recommendations of our oversight bodies and uses the constructive comments to address any identified weaknesses in our control environment — we are a learning organization, and these reports help us to continuously improve in all identified areas.”

The international agency said the contracts were awarded in the context of an unprecedented health emergency, but added that the agency is taking the recommendations in the report seriously, and has “already begun implementing many of those related to procurement.”

In a statement, BCG said, “As the global pandemic unfolded last year, BCG rapidly mobilized teams to support worldwide efforts to fight the spread of the virus. We are extremely proud of our work that contributed to saving lives in this unprecedented time and remain committed to providing our best minds and efforts to support the progress of public health.”

It’s possible “the high stress and the insufficient human resources at the onset of the pandemic made things worse and made WHO even more in need of consultants’ support and more vulnerable to their conditions,” said Gian Luca Burci, the WHO’s former legal counsel.

But “this seems to have been a misuse of funds,” Kamradt-Scott said. “This is disturbing. At least on the surface, it would appear that due diligence checks in how external agencies are engaged don’t appear to have been followed.”

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“The auditor’s report raises a red flag, and the issue of WHO’s contracts with management consulting firms deserves more scrutiny,” said Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of Geneva. At the end of the day, Kamradt-Scott said, the WHO has a “moral obligation to ensure every cent is spent appropriately.”

How the WHO broke its rules to work with BCG

Publicly funded agencies, including those that are part of the UN system like the WHO, are supposed to follow stringent rules when hiring external contractors such as management consultants. According to WHO policy, staff should “obtain the best value for money” when hiring external contractors, allow for “transparent competition among prospective providers,” and treat contractors equally.

According to the audit, BCG won eight contracts with the WHO in 2020 for a total value of $11.72 million, and the auditors closely scrutinized the two highest-value contracts, for which the WHO paid $5.4 million.

1) The auditors found WHO staff changed criteria to help BCG win work at the agency. For a contract that lasted from December 2020 to May 2021, the organization asked consultants for competitive proposals to “support the long-term vision for WHO supply chain and to build capabilities to execute the long-term supply chain vision.” Of the four consultants that submitted bids, BCG was one of two that were deemed technically qualified. But another firm won the highest score and should have been awarded the contract, the audit found. “WHO changed the evaluation criteria and re-evaluated the bids as per which Consultant A [BCG] scored higher and was awarded the consultancy,” the report said.

“The findings of the independent auditor suggest this doesn’t seem to be a case of negligence where protocols haven’t been followed because someone didn’t know what to do,” Kamradt-Scott told Vox. “It would appear WHO staff knowingly sought to circumvent the rules in order to engage a preferred provider.”

2) BCG started working for the WHO ahead of formal approval, according to the report. For the second contract, which ran from March to October 2020, BCG was hired to help the WHO purchase personal protective equipment and other essential supplies during the pandemic. Here, too, the auditors uncovered multiple irregularities.

The WHO started the work with BCG “without due approval of the competent authority, despite the fact that it entailed payment of $2.53 million by WHO,” the auditors wrote. WHO staff only sought formal approval four months after BCG started work for the agency and three of the four phases of their contract were complete, the audit found.

In the report, the WHO says it didn’t have the human resources to go through the proper procurement processes, but the auditors rejected this reasoning. “We are of the view that the formal process of approval should have been adopted before accepting the offer of [BCG] and engaging the firm. The delay in getting the approval of the competent authority was not justified.”

3) The auditors questioned whether BCG provided value for money. In one of the nine purchase orders that BCG negotiated on behalf of the WHO, the consultants got a 20 percent price reduction on protective gowns. The WHO and the consultants placed the order and approved the quality of the gowns. But an external PPE supplier, which was supporting the WHO, deemed the gowns low-quality and canceled the order. In another case, auditors flagged a missed opportunity for savings. Consultants negotiated a discount of 0.08 percent off N95 masks, for a savings of $9,750. In the same month, the same supplier fulfilled another mask order with a discount that amounted to $303,200. “We noted that [BCG] did not negotiate this price, which had better potential for saving,” the auditors wrote.

4) WHO paid millions of dollars for “pro bono” work. Another revealing finding from the audit was that BCG characterized its PPE procurement work as “pro bono,” even though one seven-month contract cost $7.3 million, of which $2.53 million was paid for by the WHO. Only the cost of the first of three phases and a transition period was covered by the consulting firm. “We are of the view that calling this engagement pro bono is not correct,” the report says.

The report comes at a time when the WHO is trying to strengthen its finances and wrangle more flexibility over how it spends money. The agency is asking for more support from countries that fund it — known as “assessed contributions” — which can be spent on a variety of expenses. The WHO is also funded by donors, such as the Gates Foundation, but that money tends to be earmarked for specific purposes.

As troubled as Moon was by the audit report’s findings, she suggested that scrutiny from the auditors is a step toward a stronger World Health Organization. “You can only have less earmarking if it’s followed by more accountability and transparency,” she said. “Heightened scrutiny of contracts with management consulting firms is one place to start.”

From his home in remote coastal British Columbia, Ernest Mason, a 77-year-old elder and hereditary chief of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais Nation, remembers. He remembers a childhood fishing trip with his father, when they packed sleeping bags but caught so many halibut they were home before dark. He remembers setting traps for pink Dungeness crab and floating hemlock branches to collect edible herring eggs.

He also remembers watching the first two times the herring stocks collapsed, and then, fearing a third collapse, telling the Canadian government that he and the other chiefs were banning commercial fishermen from their traditional territorial waters. “I said, ‘We’ll do what it takes to protect what we have,’” Mason told Vox. “This is one of the ways our grandfathers taught us, how to look after things. That’s one of the chores now.”

For coastal Indigenous communities like Mason’s, these ancestral lessons can be the difference between plenty and poverty. Mason is one of the province’s few elders who was not forced into Canada’s residential schools, which stripped Indigenous children of their languages, oral histories, and cultures. This is one reason Mason, who often wears a baseball cap over his silver hair, remembers so much.

Around the world, the memories of elders like Mason are playing a powerful role in understanding and helping to preserve marine species. A growing group of researchers, some of them from within Indigenous communities, is translating the qualitative stories of fishermen into quantitative data, in a process that often requires sensitive negotiations and uncomfortable conversations between Indigenous leaders and Western institutions. Their recollections can help fill historical and geographical gaps that have eluded scientists until now.

Five years ago, University of Victoria PhD candidate Lauren Eckert interviewed Mason for hours about his earliest fishing memories. Since then, a series of Indigenous-led research projects — based on those memories and others — have rewritten best practices on the management of two species, Dungeness crab and yelloweye rockfish. “Science is exceptionally good at taking accurate snapshots that approach truth,” Eckert says. “But Indigenous knowledge includes long-term datasets that provide this massive canvas of information that spans decades to thousands of years.”

Both yelloweye rockfish and Dungeness crab are essential to coastal Pacific ecosystems. Dungeness crab, according to one government description, is “the most important crab species harvested” in the country’s western province. Yelloweye is threatened because adults must live 15 years before they start to spawn, making them vulnerable to overfishing.

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But government managers only have reliable information on yelloweye abundance starting in 2001 — the same year a population crash forced them to start a targeted conservation plan. Yelloweye are considered a “data-poor” species, according to the plan, because data was only collected “sporadically” from the 1980s onward. This made it difficult for government scientists to tell how steeply the population had fallen since the advent of big-boat commercial fishing in the 1970s, says Eckert.

One place they hadn’t looked, however, was in the memories of those who were there all along.

To reconstruct the historical abundance, or baselines, of rockfish and crab, Eckert drew on an interview methodology developed after the 1990s Atlantic cod collapse. In this “vessel-based approach,” fishermen in Newfoundland and Labrador were asked to recall memories of specific boats on which they had fished; this prompted specific memories of fish size and abundance, as well as when and where fish had been caught. Researchers translated the accounts of Central Coast fishers into box graphs estimating size, which corroborated the official modern catch records to an astounding — but not surprising — degree, Eckert says.

As biodiversity loss and climate change loom large over our planet’s fate, these types of projects are beginning to model healthier, less extractive relationships between biologists and the communities in which they work. In the process, they could also bring key species back from the brink of extinction.

Useful Indigenous knowledge for managing species has been brushed aside

Reached by phone in late May, Mason says he still fishes whenever he can, and had spent the past few weeks chasing a run of spring salmon. He speaks of a strong connection to the species that have sustained him. “Everything within our world — that’s where our stories are told, that is where our history is told,” he says.

When Mason was growing up in Klemtu, a verdant village in traditional Kitasoo/Xai’xais territory, it seemed as if a yelloweye rockfish hovered in every deep ocean crevasse. Often caught as unintended bycatch, these highlighter-orange fish have bulging amber eyes, scooped, goldfish-like pectoral fins, and a crown of towering dorsal spikes. Yelloweye can grow to nearly a meter and are one of the world’s longest-lived fish species — one caught in Alaska in 2013 was 121 years old.

In the days before refrigeration, every yelloweye Mason and his father landed was eaten fresh, salted, or dried. Nothing went to waste. The years passed, and with them arrived faster, higher-powered commercial trawlers. Soon, Mason and his peers started noticing they weren’t catching enough yelloweye, even for their ceremonial potlatches, and the fish they were catching were getting smaller. The same was true for Dungeness crab.

Kitasoo/Xai’xais technical staff and political leaders had long expressed concerns about both species, and others, to Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). Yet the experiences of elders and fishermen were dismissed as merely anecdotal, says Alejandro Frid, an ecologist at the Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance. Founded in 2010, the CCIRA works to incorporate the best of Indigenous and Western knowledge, says Frid, and represents four nations including Mason’s.

For more than 10,000 years, the Central Coast nations have developed and practiced intricate harvesting techniques based on respect and reciprocity — like harvesting herring eggs on hemlock boughs — that long allowed the species they relied on to thrive alongside their annual harvests, says Frid.

That Indigenous stewardship was swept aside with the arrival of European settlers, who were, says University of British Columbia marine biologist Daniel Pauly, “a bunch of racists.” Science, when properly done, Pauly says, draws on all available evidence. Canadian authorities “thought that the First Nations didn’t know what they were doing,” he says. “And in 20 years, they destroyed the salmon run.”

Even Canada’s very first fisheries legislation tried to force Indigenous memories and stewardship out of the equation, says Andrea Reid, a Nisga’a Nation citizen and the principal investigator at UBC’s new Centre for Indigenous Fisheries. The government went so far as to ban freshwater fishing weirs and nets that allowed for sustainable harvesting.

One great irony, Reid says, is that Indigenous “ways of knowing” are now widely seen as “inherently scientific” in her field, in that they use experimentation and observation to learn about nature. “Many Indigenous fishing approaches stem from relational values that treat fish as relatives that we live in reciprocity with,” says Reid. “Not commodities that we exploit or command and control.”

The Central Coast Nations are not alone in this boundary-breaking work. In one paper from 2004, researcher R.J. Hamilton lived alongside Western Solomon Island spearfishers for his research into topa, or bumphead parrotfish. In addition to biological surveys, Hamilton also conducted in-depth translated interviews with 21 fishermen, many of them elderly. Near the top of his paper, he made an effort to explain the importance of Indigenous knowledge, adding that “the anthropological nature of indigenous knowledge makes it a topic that is not well understood by many marine biologists.”

More recently, the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Amazon’s Xingu River spurred research into small-scale Indigenous fishers in a 2015 study published in the Brazilian Journal of Biology. The dam would cause a permanent disruption of a traditional way of life, wrote the authors, a conclusion that came to pass within a year. “It used to take an hour to get to the fishing grounds. Now it takes twice as long,” Natanael Juruna, a member of one Indigenous community, told journalist Isabel Harari in 2016. “Some places are inaccessible because the water level is too low and we can’t pass [in our boats].”

Capturing vanishing memories is validating for those who hold them

While the scientific approach to gathering memories may differ, there are patterns across research projects. Many papers published in this emerging field draw heavily on the methods of anthropology — a field that has its own history of racism and colonialism. Often, data takes the form of anecdotes and recollections, which are gathered during confidential, hours-long, in-person interviews.

In the case of the work done by Eckert’s team and the Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance, interviewees were questioned on specific places and times as prompts — for instance, the first boat they worked on, or their earliest memories of catching fish — and promised that their fishing locations would be kept secret. Finally, the researchers anonymized, collated, and analyzed these memories before drawing conclusions from the patterns that surfaced.

Mason often felt frustrated that even as his nation fought for its tribal rights, many members of his community seemed to show deference to the Canadian government’s approval. Local and ancestral knowledge has been discounted even within Indigenous communities, says Reid. While working on her doctoral research, she herself often encountered elders who were ecstatic that their hard-won expertise was finally being taken seriously. “It has a legitimizing effect,” she says. “Even though they know more about salmon than I ever will.”

Indigenous knowledge can actually surpass and transcend the grasp of Western science, argues Frid, the CCIRA ecologist. Stories some refer to as “myths,” adds Pauly, are often vital insights passed down through generations, capturing truths and teachable lessons about everything from floods to famines. “It’s a sad statement of how there was an undervaluing of traditional and local knowledge, that [Fisheries and Oceans Canada] couldn’t see it for its own value, that it had to be translated into their own terms,” says Frid. “But it did initiate a transformation.”

In 2017, after a decade of data-gathering by the coastal nations, DFO announced it would establish a decision-making pilot program that required Indigenous leaders and government executives to agree on Dungeness crab management strategies. It was part of the government’s commitment to reconciliation, which included 2019 changes to the fisheries act designed to “lay the groundwork for better and more collaborative fisheries management,” says DFO spokesperson Jo Anne Walton. (While some DFO scientists support this blended approach, Frid encountered some reluctance that he likened to “kicking and screaming.”) The nations have yet to see changes in how yelloweye are protected.

Living up to an old adage

Years ago, Mason met with Fisheries and Oceans Canada envoys and listed off the many species that rely on small, oily herring: ling cod, halibut, red snappers, quillbacks, salmon. From there, he says, he worked his way up the food chain: “I named off humpback whales, killer whales, sea lions, seals, otters, and the birds; the loons, eagles, ravens.”

Later, Mason recalls, a federal minister expressed confusion about why orcas were dying off. With the knowledge he grew up with, it seemed simple: Without herring, the salmon went hungry; without salmon, orcas starved. He didn’t need a research study to tell him that. “For goodness’ sakes, you’re supposed to be looking after the fisheries,” he remembers thinking.

But Mason says that today, he focuses on preserving and reviving his nation’s lands and waters for future generations, not past harms. “Hopefully, we’ll get it back to a point where all our traditional foods are plentiful again,” he says. Even in the leanest, hardest times, Mason’s ancestors could harvest abalone, clams, cockles, mussels, sea cucumbers, and Dungeness crab from the low-tide ocean bottom. The ultimate goal, he says, is to live up to the old adage he once heard from his father: “When the tide is down, the table is set.”

SEAN MEEHAN LOOKS set to miss the rest of Cork’s season as he undergoes surgery to repair a hamstring injury.

The talented defender, who was the only Cork player nominated for an All-Star in 2021, will fly to the UK today ahead of the operation, according to county board chairman Marc Sheehan. 

“Sean Meehan, our joint-captain, is off to London for his surgery on his hamstring on Tuesday,” he said. 

“We wish him well on that. He’s facing (lengthy) rehabilitation certainly after that.”

It generally takes athletes at least three to six months before returning to the field following hamstring surgery so, depending on the severity of the injury, Meehan looks highly unlikely to feature again for the Rebels in 2022. 

Meehan was performing well on Galway talisman Shane Walsh before he limped off after 41 minutes in the round 4 clash. He received his All-Star nomination last season after holding David Clifford scoreless from play in the Munster final, despite the hammering Cork shipped on the day.

“We’ll be supporting his recovery like we will all the other players,” added Sheeham.

Meehan is one of a number of injuries Cork have shipped during a difficult league campaign that sees them battling to avoid relegation and dropping into the Tailteann Cup.

Sean Powter has already been ruled out of the league with the ‘significant’ hamstring injury he suffered in the Sigerson Cup final. Liam O’Donovan, Nathan Walsh, Maurice Shanley, Brian Hartnett and Damien Gore are also on the treatment table. 

On the bright side Cathail O’Mahony and Brian Hayes returned from injury to feature off the bench in Navan yesterday. 

“We’ve a hell of a lot of injuries and that’s been a feature for the last while,” said Sheehan.

“Let’s see where we’re at in terms of preparing for the championship and seeing who’s going to be there for us and all that. It is high (injury count) there’s no doubt about that.

“It was a tough game out there as well today. You get nothing soft up here in Pairc Tailteann.

“It’s been a very challenging afternoon, as you can see. A number of injuries over the course of the 70-plus minutes as well certainly didn’t help things.”

Cork were forced to use three temporary subs against Meath after players shipped heavy blows, while Brian Hurley limped off with nine minutes to play. 

Their battle to stay in Division 2 will see them host Down next weekend before they travel to Tullamore to face Offaly.

Sheehan admitted the fact they’re facing two fellow relegation candidates was “a bit of a silver lining”.

“We’re in a difficult position but there’s a resilience in the group and there’s a spirit there notwithstanding the setbacks of the various results. in the league. That’s the focus now.

“It’s a difficult enough situation but the key from our point of view is the two games coming ahead. We need to get results there.

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“We’re not in a great position, we’re acknowledging that, but there are two matches to be played, there is 140-plus minutes of football to be played and we’re certainly going to be up and about for that as it were and let’s see where it goes from that.”

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National Football League results

Division 3

Wicklow 0-8 Laois 1-17

Fermanagh 0-14 Louth 2-12

Division 4

Sligo 3-19 London 0-10

Carlow 1-10 Leitrim 2-14

Cavan 1-7 Tipperary 1-11

Wexford 0-15 Waterford 0-14

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IT WAS A mixed afternoon for the promotion-chasers in Division Four of the National Football Leagues. They all came head-to-head as the top of the table tightens, and the basement battle heats up.

Cavan’s 100% record came to an end after a four-point defeat to Tipperary in Kingspan Breffni Park, though they remain at the summit.

Both sides won provincial titles on a dramatic November day in 2020, but find themselves in the bottom-tier after being relegated from Division 3 together last season.

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While they’re both now pushing to go straight back up, it was the Premier County who were celebrating today after a significant win on the road.

Tipperary led 1-5 to 1-4 at half time; Conor Sweeney’s 21st-minute goal cancelled out by Caoimhín O’Reilly’s at the other end just before the break. Sweeney finished with 1-4 (three frees, one mark), though goalkeeper Michael O’Reilly and his defence were key as they limited Cavan to just three frees in the second half.

Sligo, meanwhile, got their own promotion bid back on track with a comprehensive 18-point win over London at Markievicz Park.

Star forward Niall Murphy hit 2-5 for the Yeats county, while Brian Egan also found the back of the net in the first half. Both teams finished with 14 men after Sligo’s Conor Griffin and Conal Gallagher of London were sent-off in the second-half.

Elsewhere in Division 4, Andy Moran’s Leitrim enjoyed an impressive seven-point win in Carlow, while Waterford remain the only team without a win after a one-point defeat to Wexford. 

Source: GAA.ie.

It’s tight at the top!

Five counties in Div. 4 are still in the mix for promotion.

Two games left each, Cavan and Tipp in control of their own destiny 👇

Cavan: London/Waterford
Tipp: Carlow/London
Sligo: Waterford/Leitrim
Leitrim: Wexford/Sligo
London: Cavan/Tipp@Score_Beo pic.twitter.com/KBvy5BAMfb

— Tommy Rooney (@TomasORuanaidh) March 13, 2022

In Division 3, Mickey Harte’s Louth put themselves right in the promotion race with an excellent win over Fermanagh in Brewster Park, Enniskillen.

It finished 2-12 to 0-14, with Tommy Durnin and Sam Mulroy’s first-half goals crucial for the Wee County. Mulroy and former AFL player Ciaran Byrne were influential before the posts, the latter sprung from the bench, while the ever-present Sean Quigley led Fermanagh’s scoring charge.

FT – Fermanagh 0-14 Louth 2-12.

Louth win in Fermanagh for the first time since March 14, 2010, and for just the second time ever in a league match.

The last time they won at Brewster Park, they went to the Leinster final.

A real promotion showdown with Antrim next Sunday.

— Caoimhín Reilly (@CaoimhinReilly) March 13, 2022

And Laois recorded a convincing 12-point win over Wicklow in Aughrim.

The O’Moore county head home with two valuable points, their promotion hopes alive and relegation fears eased. Gary Walsh top-scored with 0-7 (five frees), while Evan O’Carroll contributed 1-2.

Wicklow remain rooted to the bottom of the table, without a win.

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Roscommon 0-12
Derry 0-12

LIKE A DAYTIME TV soap opera, this afternoon’s contest between Roscommon and Derry was far more about drama than style or production values, as these two sides played out a draw that leaves both of them no further on and no further back in the race for promotion from Division Two of the Allianz League.

Any contest where the referee’s card count is 50% higher than either team’s total number of scores can be described as fractious and niggly, though it would be a stretch to say that the fare at Dr. Hyde Park was downright confrontational.

Every foul in Roscommon today seemed to have a purpose, and consequently the story of the game can be measured by key decisions from referee Seán Lonergan. The Tipperary official got a lot more right than wrong on a very difficult day for any man with a whistle, but his black card for Cian McKeon early in the second half, his failure to allow advantage when Cathal Heneghan was fouled but had broken the tackle and was one on one with Odhrán Lynch, and his second yellow for Shaner McGuigan had a huge bearing on the contest.

Just one of Lonergan’s 18 cards were shown in the first half, when Roscommon’s 0-8 to 0-4 wind-assisted lead seemed like nothing more than a stage setter. Shane McGuigan kicked Derry off with two good early points but the Rossies took over from there.

Donie Smith, Conor Cox, Eddie Nolan, Enda Smith and Niall Daly all kicked excellent points from distance while at the other end of the field, Brian Stack was very strong in his man on man battle with McGuigan, and Roscommon were able to bottle up the relatively small scoring area.

It was after half time that things really got going.

Sublime early points from Cathal Heneghan and Cian McKeon after half-time changed the complexion of the game considerably as it gave the Rossies a much bigger lead to defend and also demonstrated their potency when playing into the breeze, and while Pádraig McGrogan got Derry off the mark immediately afterwards, it was only when McKeon was black carded for his role in a melee at midfield that Derry really took over.

Even so, when Conor Cox kicked the free that was awarded for the last-ditch foul on Heneghan, Roscommon led by 0-11 to 0-5 and looked dominant.

Paul Cassidy and McGuigan fired two points in quick succession to both reduce the gap and shift the momentum of the contest, but after that it was a case of wearing down the home side with constant, relentless pressure. The card count mounted, the free count mounted, Roscommon failed to test the keeper with another couple of half-goal chances, and when a superb sidestep and finish from Brendan Rogers drew the sides level with over ten minutes of normal time to play, it looked like there was only going to be one winner.

Sure enough the Oak Leaf men took the lead through another McGuigan free, with Niall Daly getting a second yellow card for the foul, but Roscommon produced one last sustained attack and it fell to Keith Doyle to be their unlikely hero, as their 2021 U-20 midfielder kicked his first ever senior point for the county from 30 metres out to tie up the game.

The final act was entirely in keeping with everything that went on before as Brian Stack was black-carded and Shane McGuigan received a second yellow for an altercation.

With McGuigan off the field, it fell to midfielder Emmet Bradley to take on the last scoring chance of the match, a 45 metre free that he pushed narrowly wide of the posts.

Scorers for Roscommon: Donie Smith 0-4 (0-2f), Conor Cox 0-2 (0-1f), Enda Smith, Niall Daly, Eddie Nolan, Cathal Heneghan, Cian McKeon, Keith Doyle 0-1 each.

Scorers for Derry: Shane McGuigan 0-8 (0-5f), Benny Heron, Paul Cassidy, Pádraig McGrogan, Brendan Rogers 0-1 each.

Roscommon

1 Colm Lavin (Éire Óg)

4. Eoin McCormack (St. Dominic’s), 3. Brian Stack (St. Brigid’s), 2. David Murray (Pádraig Pearses)

5. Richard Hughes (Roscommon Gaels), 6. Niall Daly (Pádraig Pearses), 7. Ronan Daly (Pádraig Pearses)

8. Ultan Harney (Clann na nGael), 9. Eddie Nolan (St. Brigid’s)

10. Ciaráin Murtagh (St. Faithleach’s), 11. Enda Smith (Boyle), 12. Niall Kilroy (Fuerty)

13. Cian McKeon (Boyle), 14. Donie Smith (Boyle), 15. Conor Cox (Éire Óg)

Subs 

Cathal Heneghan (Michael Glaveys) for Murtagh (half-time)

Diarmuid Murtagh (St. Faithleach’s) for Kilroy (53)

Keith Doyle (St. Dominic’s) for McKeon (58)

Andrew Glennon (Michael Glaveys) for Cox (66)

Ciarán Sugrue (St. Brigid’s) for D Smith (69).

Derry

1. Odhrán Lynch (Magherafelt)

4. Conor McCluskey (Magherafelt), 3. Brendan Rogers (Slaughtneil), 2. Christopher McKaigue (Slaughtneil)

12. Gareth McKinless (Ballinderry), 6. Pádraig McGrogan (Newbridge), 7. Conor Doherty (Newbridge)

8. Conor Glass (Glen), 9. Emmett Bradley (Glen)

10. Paul Cassidy (Bellaghy), 11. Oisín McWilliams (Swatragh), 5. Ethan Doherty (Glen)

13. Benny Heron (Ballinascreen), 14. Shane McGuigan (Slaughtneil), 15. Niall Loughlin (Greenlough)

Subs

Ciarán McFaul (Glen) for Doherty (44)

Niall Toner (Lavey) for Heron (46)

Lachlan Murray (Desertmartin) for Loughlin (49)

Ben McCarron (Steelstown) for McWilliams (70+1).

Referee: Seán Lonergan (Tipperary).

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Galway 2-8
Clare 1-5

EIGHT PLAYERS FOUND the target for Galway as they continued their perfect start to their Division Two campaign with a fifth win in succession at a wet Tuam Stadium.

The scoring was low but it was an intriguing first half where it was level 1-2 to 1-2 at the break, with Cillian Rouine and Robert Finnerty trading goals.

The swirling breeze favoured Clare but they failed to make full use of it and then in the second-half Galway opened up with Damien Comer pouncing for a crucial goal seven minutes after the restart.

Worryingly for Galway manager Pádraic Joyce, Shane Walsh limped off in the third quarter but his team had enough in the tank to keep up their perfect form.

Clare got a dream start and it was the unlikely figure of Rouine who popped up to shoot to the net after less than three minutes.

Aaron Griffin linked with Keelan Sexton and he set up the roaming corner-back, who finished off the post and into the Galway net.

That was the only score for the opening ten minutes, Galway were pegged back deep in their own territory but on one of the rare occasions when they did get a chance to venture forward Johnny Heaney finally got their first score in the tenth minute.

That was cancelled out by a fantastic Eoin Cleary effort from distance moments later.

Galway were unlucky not to have a goal of their own in the 13th minute when Comer rose high to fist a Dylan McHugh long delivery just over the bar. If that showed a glimpse of what Galway were capable of the next score was pure class.

Shane Walsh won possession and drove forward down the right wing, he spotted Finnerty’s smart movement inside and gave a pinpoint pass, with the Salthill/Knocknacarra clubman finishing into the bottom corner past Tristan O Callaghan.

Finnerty shot Galway’s first wide in the 19th minute and four minutes later he was shown a black card after being penalised for a trip on Manus Doherty.

Clare, who shot five wides to Galway’s four in the opening half, only managed one point with the extra man with Cleary pointing a free five minutes from the break to send them in level at 1-2 apiece at the interval.

David Tubridy scored from a mark on the resumption but Kieran Molloy responded in style for Galway. Jack Glynn took a quick mark to set up McHugh for Galway’s next point and then from the resumption Johnny Heaney got a hand to a short kickout from goalkeeper Tristan O’Callaghan to set Comer up for a goal which set Galway on their way to victory.

Heaney, Paul Conroy and Matthew Tierney made it 1-5 without reply and it wasn’t until the 59th minute when Sexton finally hit back from a Clare free.
Dessie Conneely and Jamie Malone exchanged points as Galway continued their drive to get back to the top flight at the first time of asking.

Scorers for Galway: Damien Comer 1-1, Robert Finnerty 1-0, Johnny Heaney 0-2, Kieran Molloy 0-1, Dylan McHugh 0-1, Paul Conroy 0-1, Matthew Tierney 0-1, Dessie Connelly 0-1.

Scorers for Clare: Cillian Rouine 1-0, Eoin Cleary 0-2 (0-1f), David Tubridy 0-1 (0-1m), Keelan Sexton 0-1 (0-1f), Jamie Malone 0-1.

Galway

1. Conor Flaherty (Claregalway)

17. Jack Glynn (Claregalway) 4. Liam Silke (Corofin) 2. Kieran Molloy (Corofin)

5. Dylan McHugh (Corofin) 6. John Daly (Mountbellew/Moylough) 7. Cillian McDaid (Monivea/Abbeyknockmoy)

9. Paul Conroy (St James’) 10. Matthew Tierney (Oughterard)

8. Paul Kelly (Moycullen) 14. Damien Comer (Annaghdown) 12. Johnny Heaney (Killannin)

15. Owen Gallagher (Moycullen) 13. Robert Finnerty (Salthill/Knocknacarra) 11. Shane Walsh (Kilkerrin/Clonberne)

Substitutes

22. Finnian Ó Laoí (An Spidéal) for Gallagher (46)
26. Eoin Finnerty (Mountbellew/Moylough) for Walsh (48)
24. Dessie Conneely (Moycullen) for R Finnerty (54)
23. Dylan Canney (Corofin) for Comer (63)
21. Niall Daly (Kilconly) for Kelly (67).

Clare

16. Tristan O Callaghan (St Breckans)

4. Cillian Rouine (Ennistymon), 2. Manus Doherty (Éire Óg), 3. Cillian Brennan (Clondegod)

5. Eoghan Collins (Ballyhaunis), 6. Cian O’Dea (Kilfenora), 7. Alan Sweeney (St Breckan’s)

8. Ciarán Russell (Éire Óg), 9. Darren O’Neill (Éire Óg)

10. Podge Collins (Cratloe), 11.Eoin Cleary (St Joseph’s Milltown), 12. Aaron Griffin (Lissycasey)

13. Jamie Malone (Corofin), 14. Keelan Sexton (Kilmurry Ibrickane), 15. David Tubridy (Doonbeg)

Substitutes

23. Emmet McMahon (St Breckan’s) for P Collins (7)
22. Joe McGann (St Breckan’s) for Sweeney (34)
17. Gavin Cooney (Éire Óg) for Tubridy (62)
19. Conor Jordan (Austin Stacks) for Rouine (62)
26. Daniel Walsh (Kilmurry Ibrickane) for Griffin (62).

Referee: Conor Lane (Cork).

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THE TYRONE LADIES football squad are without a management team three weeks out from their Division Two relegation play-off.

Kevin McCrystal and his management team stepped down ahead of next month’s showdown with Clare following a mixed start to the 2022 season.

“The players have decided they want to go down a different path and I have informed the executive of my decision to step aside,” McCrystal told Gaelic Life yesterday evening.

“I’ve been involved with the senior ladies and development squads over the last five years and I would like to put on the record my thanks to Tyrone LGFA chairperson Donna McCrory and secretary Rita Hannigan.”

Tyrone county board released a statement late last night.

“Tyrone LGFA can confirm that senior team manager Kevin McCrystal and his management team have stepped down from their roles with immediate affect [sic].

“Tyrone chairperson Donna McCrory and her executive wish Kevin and his backroom team the very best with their future activities and thanked them all for their time and dedication to the Tyrone senior ladies.

🗞 Late breaking news from @TyroneLGFA

Senior team manager Kevin McCrystal and his backroom team have stepped down with immediate effect #LGFA @UlsterLadies pic.twitter.com/04vStfeTtZ

— Ladies Football (@LadiesFootball) March 12, 2022

“Tyrone senior ladies and executive will be working hard together in preparation for the relegation playoff on 3 April 2022.

“No further comment will be made at this time.”

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Carrickmore native McCrystal was in his second year in charge in his second spell, having previously managed the team for a period during the noughties.

The Red Hand were defeated by Cavan and Armagh, and drew with Monaghan in this campaign under McCrystal’s watch.

The Breffni county – with former Tyrone boss Gerry Moane at the helm – consigned them to the relegation play-off after a crunch 3-11 to 1-12 win last weekend.

Davy Russell.

Source: PA

1. Davy Russell was never not coming back. Not when he broke his neck. Not when the shock from his fall in the 2020 Munster National shot down his arm and out through his finger and thumb with such a bang that it felt like a firework had gone off in his hand. Not when he was in traction, which is the fancy name given to lying on the flat of his back with bolts drilled into his head and bags of water hanging off them.

“No, no, no, no, Brian. No, no, no, no.”

I had asked Stephen Emlen, a Cornell emeritus professor of neurobiology and behavior, what seemed to me an obvious question: When he brought birds into planetariums in the 1960s and 70s, did they ever, um, make a mess in there?

“No poops in the planetarium,” Emlen assures me.

I had called Emlen to talk not about poops, but a series of experiments that have captured my imagination. He brought migratory birds into a planetarium at night and turned the stars on and off, as though erasing them from the universe of a bird’s brain.

Through these experiments, Emlen pieced together what was then a mystery: how birds know which way is which, even flying in the dark of night without the sun for guidance.

We still know incredibly little about animal migration — where they go, why they go, and how they use their brains to get there. Storks migrate from Europe to Africa, and they not only know the route, but can discover locust swarms to feed upon in the desert (long before humans detect the swarm). Whales, in their journeys across the ocean, seem to be influenced by solar storms — but no one knows which part of whale physiology allows them to sense magnetic fields.

How these animals get from point A to point B can be mysterious — and grows even more so as we uncover each new navigational feat. “We just don’t know, really, the fundamentals of animal movement,” science writer Sonia Shah says on the latest episode of Unexplainable, Vox’s podcast about unanswered questions in science.